


Lest We Forget

by EledoneCirrhosa



Category: Wraeththu - Storm Constantine
Genre: Gender-Neutral Pronouns, Ghosts, Hermaphrodites, Intersex, Other, Sulh, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-18
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-15 14:20:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11232807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EledoneCirrhosa/pseuds/EledoneCirrhosa
Summary: Craie cannot block out the voices of those who died a violent death. And there are so many, many such dead in the lands of Sulh Jinh…





	Lest We Forget

Title: Lest We Forget

Author: EledoneCirrhosa

Disclaimer: The world of Wraeththu is not mine – it belongs to Storm Constantine.

Rating: 12A (themes of war and death, non-graphic sex)

Spoilers: none

Beta: Madam Mew Mew – many thanks.

 

Craie needed aruna.

His body ached for it. His soul keened for it like one of the lonely ghosts. Frequently they were so loud in his head there was only room for their human thoughts, human memories. He forgot he was har. Eventually his body would remind him. It would push past the human echoes and inform his soul of its needs.

So he made his preparations. The Flowermoon day was blisteringly hot, yet Craie slowly and methodically covered as much of his flesh as he could. Strips of cloth wound like bandages on each limb. Then loose, shapeless clothing to conceal what lay beneath. Scarf wrapped around his face. Finally he donned a hooded jacket more suitable for autumn chill than spring warmth.

He gathered the bunches of mistletoe he had dried last winter and made a bundle of them, wrapping them in a sheet. Then he set out for the town and the nayati.

The dead felt him leaving. Voices chorused in his head, memories flickered across his flesh. He stood stock still until he could be certain he could walk without stumbling – until he was confident he even had feet to walk on.

_Walk? How can you walk? Your foot is a pulped ruin, pumping bright scarlet onto the wet sand. You lie in the summer grass and can feel nothing below the waist. Your leg is a screaming agony from knee to hip, as you try to crawl to safety._

“Not going far. Won’t be long.” He mumbled reassurances to them as he trudged through the forest.

He was pretty sure the ghosts didn’t talk to each other much. Perhaps if they did they would be less lonely, less bewildered, less angry? That would be nice, Craie thought wistfully.

It was only a few kilometres to the hara community of Bodiocassi. Each step put him at more distance from the huge coastal cemetery, but brought him one closer to the inland ones near the ruins of Ryes and Bayeux. Those were smaller than the one he currently inhabited; even the large one at Bayeux only half the size of his present home. Unfortunately, half the size was still thousands of graves.

Thousands of human lives snuffed out instantly by violence or claimed a short while later by wounds inflicted by violence. The essence of the carnage soaked into sand and soil and rocks. Memories of death carried with flesh and bone from the spot they fell to the site where they now lay.

It was not unusual for a human cemetery to contain the shade of someone who had died a violent death. Craie was well aware that graves of the recent dead housed more than a few who had perished at Wraeththu’s hands. In most of those sites, however – whether ancient or recent – the spirits who raged and wept and clutched at hara souls were singular, rarely multiple.

In the land of Sulh Jinh they were legion.

All over their territory existed human shrines to those who died in the chaos and carnage of war. The largest shrine had crosses and six pointed stars of white marble. Dozens of others bore headstones of fine-grained white-grey limestone with more complicated symbols incised into them, though a cross or star was usually also present. A few had low, squat, dark grey crosses of basalt, some intriguingly with two names to each memorial. To the best of Craie’s knowledge these cemeteries were scattered from the shores of the Little Divide eastwards into Cordagne, Thaine, Almagabra and even beyond the Sea of Shadows and south to the deserts of Olathe and Alkebu-lan.

Here, in the coastal lands held by the Bodiocassi phyle of the Sulh, there was a large concentration of such burial grounds. Here lay beaches where hara rarely ventured, for fear of what the land would whisper to them of blood and death and war.

 The land and the wraiths didn’t whisper to Craie – they shouted. Sometimes they shouted so loud he couldn’t discern the here-and-now though the echoes of past conflict.

_Remember, remember, remember! They promised they would remember!_

~~~

_He is a child. He is not yet called Craie. He is on a trip with other children from his school, to see a special place. It must be a special place, because Madame Vauclain is taking them there in a van. Fuel for vans and cars and tractors is very, very scarce, and not to be used for trivial things, his parents are always telling him. Papa used to have a tractor, but now his fields are ploughed by oxen._

_All his friends are coming on the trip. Guillaume and Laurent are coming too, because they have guns. If bad things happen, it is Guillaume and Laurent’s job to make them stop or go away. Everyone must always do what Madame Vauclain says, except when bad things are happening. Then even Madame Vauclain has to obey Guillaume and Laurent._

_The place they go to has space for many, many vans, but theirs is the only one there. An old man greets them all. His accent is strange, and Madame Vauclain tells them he is from a country across the sea, and he is one of the caretakers for this place._

_At first he thinks the old man is not very good at being a caretaker, because the grass is uncut, the hedges and trees are not pruned and weeds sprout everywhere. But the old man leads them down a long path and shows them the beach, and tells of a great battle which was fought there, where people from many countries across the sea came to help fight bad people who had stolen child-Craie’s own country. So he understands the old man is a caretaker of stories, not of gardens._

_Next the old man leads them to a sort of temple, where they meet two even older people. And he sees beyond the temple, to the vast area of graves – bigger even than Papa’s very biggest field – where the grass is trimmed and the weeds are pulled, and the dead are revered._

_The old people are happy to see them, yet also sad. People from their country used to come here to visit the dead, but that no longer happens. He asks why. Guillaume and Laurent use words he doesn’t understand: natural disasters, closed borders, isolationist, civil unrest, Wraeththu crisis. Madame Vauclain explains bad people are stealing the countries across the sea._

_He asks: Will we go to save their country from the bad people, in return for the time they saved ours?_

_Madame Vauclain shakes her head. No, she says with infinite sadness, we will not._

~~~

Forest gave way to wild meadows and then to neatly tended crops. Hara working in the fields stopped to stare as he shuffled past. A couple called out a greeting.

Craie kept his hood up and his head down. He thought he only had one eye today, though he couldn’t be sure. He was never sure which of the memories were just in his head and which were written in his flesh.

Suddenly a harling was in his path. Craie halted abruptly. Harlings were new and wondrous and strange. He didn’t understand quite how they worked or where they fitted into the world. The ghosts never talked of harlings.

“You are Craie?” asked the harling.

“Yes.”

The harling did not appear to be afraid or disgusted, so perhaps he had two eyes today after all?

 “Craie who talks to the dead?”

“Yes.”

“You make bad things go away?”

Did he? Craie considered. Sometimes he went down to the beaches. He found the grains of sand which remembered and separated them from the grains which did not. He carried the grains which remembered back up the dune path to the cemetery and gently placed them in one of the old human buildings so they would not blow away. Most of the rooms were full now, and there were still so, so _many_ grains of sand upon the beaches and in the dunes…

“Yes,” he said.

“This rock remembers a bad thing.” The harling reached into a pocket and withdrew a scrunched piece of cloth. He solemnly unwrapped it, revealing a pitted fragment of brick. When Craie did not react, the harling stretched out his hand, offering the fragment to him.

He shifted his bundle to his other hand and reached with clumsy, cloth-wrapped fingers and picked the fragment up.

_Your house. It has stood for centuries, sheltered generations of your family. Yet when the bomb fell, in an instant the house shattered; its very fabric tearing through their bodies – through your body. Your shattered flesh breathes a last breath, scented with dust from your house’s shattered bricks._

Craie drew a shuddering lungful of air, momentarily choking on dust which was not there.

The harling’s expression became alarmed. “Are you all right? I didn’t mean to…”

He spat to clear his mouth of dust. “Yes.”

“Can you make the rock forget?”

“No.”

“Oh.” The harling looked disappointed. “Can you take the rock away?”

“Yes.” The fragment would not blow away, so it could sit outside the buildings which housed the sand.

The harling grinned, shoved the cloth into his hands and skipped off. Craie put his bundle down and spent a moment carefully re-wrapping the shard. He gently placed it in the pocket of his jacket, and continued his painful shuffling way to Bodiocassi.

When he arrived at the nayati, Hienama Chevreuille was busy with a trio of strangers, poring over books and maps with them. Craie squatted down on the flint cobbles outside to wait, ignoring the strange glances the strangers cast his way. An acolyte brought him a cup of water.

The dead at Bayeux and Ryes were now competing in his head with the dead back at the beach; all wanting to be heard, to ease their pain, to mourn. The distance from each site made it bearable. The fragment was the loudest voice. Perhaps he could leave it with Chevreuille for a while?

Or perhaps he ought to take it to the cemetery at Bayeux? He hadn’t been there for a year or more. It wasn’t far away. From the roof of the nayati a har could see right across the village fields and the forest to the crumbling buildings of the human city. Craie knew this because he had done it once. Chevreuille had not been pleased.

If you looked north from the roof, the sea stretched along the horizon. The sea with its long stretches of blood-soaked beach. The lie of the land meant you couldn’t see them directly, but Craie was always aware of their presence.

 “That’s Craie. He can’t block out the voices of dead soldiers. He hears them constantly.”

“Why is he bundled up like that in this heat?”

Chevreuille was on the steps of the nayati, talking to the strangers about him. Craie didn’t mind. Hara talked about him all the time. But only in his ears, not in his mind. He wished the dead only talked in his ears. It would be quieter.

_The staccato bursts of machine gun fire. The boom of artillery. The screams of the dying._

“Good afternoon, Tiahaar Craie.”  Chevreuille was standing by his side, smiling down at him. The strangers had gone. Craie hadn’t noticed them leave.

“I need aruna.”

“Do you wish to take aruna with me?” Chevreuille asked kindly.

“No. Yes. Maybe.” He hadn’t got as far as working out the steps of finding somehar yet. First he needed to know how much of him still existed. If his body was har or human, whole or harmed. “I need you to look… to check…”

Chevreuille patted him on the shoulder. “Of course. Why don’t you—“

Craie was already shuffling to the interior of the nayati, where it was dim and cool and nohar would be able to see.

 “What have you got there, Craie?” Chevreuille asked, gesturing at Craie’s bundle, gripped tight in one hand.

He looked at his hand.

_You have no hand. The shell blew your arm apart, leaving only tatters of bloody meat below the elbow. The bullet took off two of your fingers, and gangrene claimed the rest. The hot metal seared your hand to the bone, as you tried to bail out of the burning tank._

“Mistletoe.”

“For the nayati?”

“Yes. No.” The question was confusing. “Mistletoe for…”

“To trade?” Chevreuille offered.

“Yes.” Craie nodded enthusiastically. “Check, then aruna, then trade.”

He carefully took down his hood and unwound the scarf from his face, then looked at Chevreuille expectantly.

The hienama was nodding encouragingly. “It’s fine, Craie. Your head is fine.”

“I have two eyes?”

“Yes, you have two eyes. Two eyes, two ears, one nose, a fine head of hair. The scars are faint today.”

Craie grunted and one by one shed first his jacket, then the loose clothing, and finally unwound the strips of cloth. At each stage Chevreuille described what he could see – which portions of his body were maimed and which unblemished; which wounds looked raw and red and barely healed, and which were old scars; which were ugly and obvious, and which were faint patterns like exotic writing on his skin.

“You are skin and bone, Craie. You need to eat more.”

A shrug. Sometimes he forgot how to eat. Forgot his teeth or jaw or tongue were intact; forgot the sensation in his gut was hunger, not pain. 

“Will hara like to look at me? For aruna?”

Chevreuille sighed. “Yes, hara will like to look at you, skinny though you are.”

“What should be hidden?”

“Your left arm is the worst, and there are some nasty looking gashes on your back.” The hienama helped him to wrap his strips of cloth around the offending wounds, frowning as he did so. “Craie, do those ones cause you the most pain?”

Craie blinked. Chevreuille often asked this, as did the churgeon at Caen-Sulh. He had tried to explain it varied from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute. He didn’t think they understood.

“Craie, do you want me to take some of the pain away? Jaspe too – Jaspe can help.”

If Chevreuille and Jaspe took the pain, he would not be able to take aruna with them. He would need to seek someone in the village. Craie stared at the floor and thought. It would be nice if some pain went away. “Yes,” he said.

~~~

Chevreuille made him eat something before they began. Craie chewed methodically on a hunk of bread and cheese as the hienama and acolyte prepared to do their healing. It tasted of blood and grit and a mouth filled with seawater.

“Lie down, please.”

Chevreuille and Jaspe laid gentle hands on him and poured their energies into him. They knitted together the ravaged flesh, the wounds which were not wounds, and – when the wounds fought back – they took some of the pain and anger into themselves.

It felt good. It reminded him of who he once was – the time after his inception when he’d believed himself immortal, invulnerable, invincible.

Chevreuille brought the process to a halt when Jaspe began shuddering with the effort.

Craie stood up. “I will find someone. I will tell them to be quick.”

“No.” The hienama raised a hand in negation. “We can bear this, Craie. Take your time.”

Jaspe made a soft whimper, and Chevreuille gave him a stern glance.  

“You have to look after the brick.” Craie pointed to where his jacket lay neatly folded upon a cushion. He was suddenly reluctant to touch the garment, in case the shard awakened a new wound. 

~~~

Craie went to the inn. Inns were where hara met and mingled. Inns had beds. Inns were places where aruna happened.

Over the years, the hara world around him had metamorphosed from chaos and violence to stability and commerce. Embroiled in the needs of ghosts, Craie had caught only glimpses of this progress. He liked what he saw: caste ascension, diligently tended fields, harlings. He had wistful hope hara would never wage war upon each other the way the humans had; that there would be no Wraeththu memorial to the slain.

With some of the pain taken by Chevreuille and Jaspe, his gait became stronger, more even. The ghosts were fainter. He could make them more faint with aruna, and fainter still if he was soume; the majority of the ghosts were very male. Those ones didn’t understand soume.

There were not many hara at the inn. The strangers were there, eating a meal. The pothar, Moluta, smiled uncertainly at Craie.

“I need aruna.”

“Ah. Are Chevreuille or Jaspe not...?”

“No.”

The strangers stared at him. A black haired one pushed a chair towards him. “Sit with us, tiahaar. You’re Craie, right?”

“Yes.” Did the stranger want to roon? It was polite to sit and talk and share food before aruna. Even the ghosts were agreed on that. Craie sat down.

The black haired one offered him a cup of wine. Craie took it and stared at the red colour. Was that real? Or blood in seawater?

“I’m Flint. This is Setonne and that’s Kessarn.” His accent was of the Sulh from across the Little Divide. “Your hienama told us ghosts talk to you.”

“Yes.”

There was a pause as if the hara expected him to say more. Kessarn filled the silence: “And when the ghosts talk to you, their voices are quietened for others?”

Chevreuille had told him this was the case. Craie had no reason to doubt him. “Yes.”

The three strangers exchanged a look which he could not interpret. Instead Craie drank the liquid in the cup, finding it tasted mostly of wine and only a little of blood and salt.

“Does that disturb you?” asked Flint.

Did what disturb him? The wine? The ghosts? “Sometimes the ghosts are very loud,” he said. “Then I forget how to be har. Chevreuille helps me remember. Aruna helps me remember.”

The pothar came over, laid a possessive hand on Craie’s shoulder. “Tiahaara, please do not upset our Craie. He does not see the world as we do.”

“Apparently not,” Flint remarked acerbically. 

The pothar scowled. He squeezed Craie’s shoulder reassuringly. “Craie, if you’ll wait until these tiahaara have finished their meal, I’ll take aruna with you.”

Craie gave a quick nod. He could wait. He was good at waiting.

“A moment.” Flint lifted Craie’s free hand with his own, brushed his lips across the scarred fingers. “Would you like to take aruna with _me_?”

“Now?” asked Craie. Now was better than waiting.

A laugh. “Yes, right now, if it takes your fancy. I have a room upstairs…”

“Yes.” He stood and moved towards the stairs, not heeding the voices of the pothar and the strangers raised in argument behind him.

~~~

“Was your hair always white?” Flint enquired. He threw wide the door and made a grand gesture towards the bed within.

“No.” The ghosts’ gift to him – each brown strand growing back white as wounds came and went, scars materialised and faded.

“You don’t talk much, do you?”

“No.” He needed to save his words for the dead.

Flint laughed. He kicked the door shut and reached to touch Craie’s face. Stepped closer and angled his head to share breath.

Craie pulled back, surprised Flint wanted to share breath. Certainly nohar local would share breath with him. For who would want the ghosts wailing in their minds, as they wailed in his?

“What’s wrong?”

“There are ghosts in my head.”

A grin. “I’ll risk it.”

Their mouths met. Flint’s aura was the blazing orange of autumn leaves in the sunshine and the distant bugle of a rutting stag. He was confidence and optimism and superiority. He was Wraeththu.

_You’ll never again kiss your wife. Never again feel your sweetheart’s lips on yours. Never again taste the cigarettes and gum flavour of Mitch from B Company._

Flint jerked back with a cry of alarm. “What in Aghama’s name was _that?_ ”

“The ghosts.”

“Are they like that all the time?”

“No. Sometimes loud. Sometimes quiet.” He cocked his head to one side. “Aruna makes them quiet,” he said hopefully.

Another laugh, more nervous this time. “Sure. But let’s avoid sharing breath, okay?”

“Yes.”

Craie began to strip off his clothing, methodically folding each garment and placing it on a chair. He heard a gasp and glanced over to see Flint staring at him. The other har circled him, looking over the layer upon layer of scars.

Flint hesitantly touched his chest, fingers tracing where the faint line of a shrapnel scar slashed across it, then over the stippled pattern of multiple bullet holes. “All this is done by the ghosts?”

“Yes.”

“Is it worse at night?”

“No. Worst late spring and summer.” Each year it would crescendo seventeen days before the summer solstice and rage on for months. Though in truth it never truly went away; just ebbed like the tide. Just as the sea was always there, so were the ghosts.

“You must be incredibly resilient if all this hasn’t killed you!”

Killed him? Why would the ghosts want to kill him? They would have no-one to listen to them if they killed him.

Flint’s skin was smooth. No scars apart from the mark of inception. Craie reciprocated the touch, revelling in the shape and feel of a body which was har, not human. Ouana to his soume. He pulled Flint to the bed, the urgent demands of aruna surpassing any thought of ghosts, or scars, or pain.

 ~~~

“They are exploiting you, you know.”

Craie was snuggled against Flint, awash with the afterglow and the energies released. He felt the return of the har he had been before the ghosts. Sometimes he missed that har; his carefree ways and his ignorant and arrogant assumption he had a great destiny ahead of him.

Who was exploiting him? Did Flint mean the ghosts? “Who?”

“Everyhar in this village. Doubtless everyhar in nearby villages too. They couldn’t exist this close to _those_ beaches without you to mitigate the ghosts’ effect.”

Craie blinked and altered position to look up at Flint’s face. “They need me.”

“They don’t _need_ you. They’re _using_ you.” Flint sat up, gesticulating in the direction of the nayati. “Humans bred like rabbits. They had to have a village every few kilometres or they’d all be living on top of each other. Hara are far, far fewer.”

“Harlings. More hara soon.” Craie pulled himself into a sitting position to mirror Flint’s posture.

“Yes, but not like humans. We respect the land, and we know we’re long-lived. We’ll keep our numbers small.” Flint was scowling now. “There’s plenty space. The villagers could abandon Bodiocassi and rebuild somewhere else. They just choose not to. Because you let them take advantage of you.”

Craie from There-Then agreed with this. Craie from Here-Now was not so sure.

Flint grasped his hands. His voice was filled with intensity and passion. “Don’t you want a normal life? Don’t you want to roon every day? Have harlings… travel… learn things about the hara world and forget about the human one?”

“Yes.” Of course he did. We wanted a life free of pain and horror. But the ghosts would be so lonely if he left. So desperate. So betrayed. 

~~~

They rooned again. Craie was ouana this time, his confidence and daring growing as the ghosts kept their distance. He longed to share breath with Flint. Yet the intrusion of spirits – even quietly whispering ones – would spoil everything. Better not to take the risk.

Instead he licked and lapped at Flint’s body, his essence. Drinking in every taste and touch. Revelling in the sensation of being har.

Flint yipped in ecstasy and then relaxed. He grinned. “For a har who doesn’t get about much, you sure know how to roon.”

“Yes.”

The grin broadened. “Craie et Silex. Chalk and Flint. We are a pair, right? A pair found together in nature. We were destined to meet.”

He was considering how to respond to that when he felt Acolyte Jaspe falter. Unable to sustain the energies any longer.

He felt Hienama Chevreuille attempt to take up the slack, but it was too late: the ghosts found the gap in the energies and flooded through, demanding his attention.

Craie screamed and wrenched himself off Flint. Clawing at the hole punched in his abdomen, deaf from the explosion, blind from the shards of bone in his eyes.

_Private Gonzales, 29 th Infantry Division – remember me. Lance Corporal Tattershall, 47 Commando – remember me. Sapper Outhwaite, 5th Assault Regiment – remember me. _

Craie drew a spasmodic breath and concentrated, willing his Wraeththu body to heal itself. Flint was shocked into immobility, staring in disbelief at the blood. Then he belatedly scrambled to grab Craie’s hand, add his energies to the effort.

The memories shifted from open wounds to inflamed, red scars. Sight and hearing returned, muted but serviceable. The pain receded to the level he had lived with for years.

Flint stared at him, blinking tears from his eyes. “I had no idea…”

He shrugged. It was what it was.

“Craie.” Flint cupped his face in his hands, kissed him on the forehead. “Craie, you can’t live like this. You have to leave this place!”

~~~

As Craie carefully and got dressed, Flint remonstrated with him, reiterating again and again that he should leave the lands of the Bodiocassi phyle – perhaps leave the land of Sulh Jinh altogether.

“They need me,” Craie replied, but Flint was not swayed. His arguments became angry, more vehement; as if he was attempting to shout down the ghosts. Craie stopped listening. It was so much easier to not hear a har than to not hear the dead.

Flint followed him downstairs and then to the door of the inn. There was urgent conversation with other hara in the inn. He was sure Flint believed his words and reasons were important, but the ghosts told him of many important things. There was no room in his head for more.

_For the Motherland, for the Fatherland, for Freedom, for vengeance, for survival, for it is the right thing to do…_

~~~

When he returned to the nayati, Chevreuille had a pack filled with food waiting for him. “In trade for your mistletoe,” he said.

It was a very large amount of food. Craie suspected the hienama had given him much more than the plants were worth.

There was a second bundle. “Tiahaar Belle has made new boots for you. And the villagers have provided more clothes, bandages and soap.”

Craie was not sure he could carry both burdens. Chevreuille noticed his dismayed look. “Don’t worry – Jaspe and I will bring it all to you later.”

“Good.”

“Have you decided where you will live next?”

Craie pondered. He had spent a lot of time in the east. Perhaps it was time to talk to the ghosts in the west? “Ryes,” he said. “Then the Beach of Gold.”

A nod. “We will find you at Ryes, then. And Craie…“

He looked up.

“Don’t leave it so long, next time. You don’t have to walk all the way to the nayati. Just find the nearest har and ask them to pass a message.”

_Last words. Death letter. Telegram._

“Yes.” He picked up the pack and set out for the cemetery at Ryes.

~~~

“Craie!”

There was the sound of cantering hooves behind him. The hoofbeats caught up, overtook, and there was a prancing bay horse blocking his way, Flint astride its back. The mounts of the two other strangers approached more sedately.

Flint slipped from the horse’s back, grinning. “The hienama wasn’t keen to tell us where you were headed, but a harling saw you pass by – and harlings love to chatter.”

“I am going to Ryes.”

Flint exchanged a glance with his companions. “I thought we could talk for a while. Share a meal. Drink.” He rummaged in his saddle bags, produced a bottle.

Craie frowned. He was almost at Ryes – if he kept up the pace he would be at the cemetery before sundown. “I need to get to Ryes.”

Flint slapped the horse’s flank. “Don’t worry, this lad can carry us both. We can gallop all the way. We’re heading past there anyway – down to the coast.”

“Boat to catch,” put in Kessarn.

“Beach of Gold?” Craie asked.

There was a momentary look of horror on Kessarn’s face. “No, no! The harbour at Bessin-Sulh.”

Bessin-Sulh had seen battle too. The blood and death wasn’t as extensive there as on the Five Beaches. Most of the dead had been interred elsewhere.  Perhaps that made it quieter to other hara?

“So what do you say? Share a drink with us, then we’ll take you to Ryes, quick as you like.” Flint’s tone was cajoling.

A fast horse would be quicker than walking. “Yes,” said Craie. He sat down.

Flint gave a nervous laugh. The others dismounted and spread cloaks on the ground to sit on. They unwrapped packages to reveal flatbreads and cured meats. Setonne’s hands shook; he almost dropped the flatbread he passed to Craie. Flint scowled at his companion and gave him one of the intent stares which often indicated hara were communicating by mind-touch.

“Good, eh?” Flint took a bite of his own flatbread. “Got mushrooms cooked into it. Kessarn’s secret recipe.”

Craie dutifully ate a few mouthfuls. Any mushroom taste was overwhelmed by bully beef and ashes.

“Here, drink.” Flint uncorked the bottle and passed it to him. Setonne and Kessarn were drinking from a shared bottle of their own.

He was not sure if it was wine or spirits, but it burned a path down his gullet in a way nothing had for years. The ghosts took notice; an odd undercurrent arising in their chatter.

“Come on – don't sip, savour. This is good stuff.” Flint pushed the bottle back at him when he tried to hand it over.

Craie took another few mouthfuls, using them to wash down the ashen bread. With each gulp the ghosts hissed like angry cats. Yet strangely their voices were more distant. Craie squinted at the bottle, but it bore only the marks of a Cordagne vintner. “What is this?” he asked.

Again there was a glance exchanged between the trio which he could not interpret. “Oh just something we picked up on our travels,” said Flint glibly. “Do you like it?”

“Yes. No.” He could feel it interacting in a peculiar way with the food he had eaten. The ghosts were screaming entreaties and warnings at him. “I must go.”

He stood up, and the world swayed around him. Only Flint’s quick intervention stopped him toppling over.

The other har lowered him carefully to the ground. “I’m sorry, Craie, but this was the only way.”

Craie felt their hands wrapping him in one of the cloaks, lifting him onto a horse. He tried to struggle, but his limbs were leaden, his body dead weight. And tired. So, so tired.

The horses galloped, but they did not head to Ryes.

He fell into slumber with the fading pleas of the ghosts in his mind.

~~~

_The child is gone. He is a young adult now. He is Craie. He is Wraeththu._

_It is the early days, the time of bloodshed, passion and rage. Wraeththu fight the humans and fight each other.  Tribes and phyles are fissioning and fusing with all the fury of the sun’s core._

_Craie and his companions are outnumbered, ambushed by a gang of Cordagne. Two are dead, the others flee with their wounded, the enemy in pursuit._

_There is a place, one says. Many, angry human spirits. If we close our minds and pass through there, the Cordagne will be disoriented. We can take advantage of it, avenge our dead. They agree and alter their flight towards the coast._

_As they draw near to the place, Craie realises he has been here before. He knows beyond the forest will be the old people, the temple, the row upon row of graves. Already he can hear the whisper of the dead in his mind._

_There is only one old person. He is stooped and bent in a way no Wraeththu ever will be. As the hara burst from the trees, he looks up from where he is scraping moss from a headstone._

_Craie calls out a denial, but it is too late. The guns have fired, the old human is felled. Around them the dead hiss and wail at this violation of their caretaker. The last. The only._

_The others run on, their thought only of the coming skirmish with the Cordagne. Craie halts, drawn to the feeble cries of the caretaker. He kneels in the tangled grass beside the human’s ruined body._

_Who will remember now? The old man laments as he lies bleeding. Forever. We promised them we would remember forever…_

_Craie opens his mind to heal the old man’s wounds, and the dead come pouring in._

~~~

When he opened his eyes, the world was still swaying. It took him a moment to realise the motion was not of land, but sea. He was on a boat.

Craie staggered to his feet and lurched for the door of the small cabin. A residue of whatever he had drunk – eaten? – was still pumping through his veins. The ghosts were barely a whisper. He fumbled the door open and half collapsed into the narrow corridor beyond.

Flint was descending the companionway. “Hey there, take your time. We’ll be docking soon.”

“Where…? _Why?”_ The word exploded from him.

“Alba Sulh. Because we had to get you away from that place. Because you wouldn’t listen to reason and neither would they. Because nohar deserves to live like you did – to suffer like you did.”

“But… who will remember?” Who would keep the promise made to those thousands of dead?

“Chevreuille. Jaspe. Anyhar who was complicit in that, that—“ Flint made a noise of exasperation.

Craie clung onto the doorframe, trying to come to terms with what Flint and his companions had done. “Alba Sulh has ghosts,” he said.

“Yes, but not like on the mainland.” Flint came closer, put an arm round him to support him.

“How?” Craie demanded.

“There are battlefields, sure.” The black-haired har was uneasy. “Bad places, some of those. You don’t want to go near _them_. But…”

Craie waited.

“The graveyards – the war dead.” Flint gave him an earnest look. “They’re quiet.”

“Alba Sulh has its own Craie?”

A vehement shake of the head. “Cordagne, Thaine, Jaddayoth – there are hara like you. Not in Alba Sulh.”

There were others like him? Craie was briefly surprised, then gratified. It would be very hard to tend to the ghosts of a whole continent.

Flint assisted him up the companionway to the deck, still talking as he did so. Craie tuned back in to his voice.

“You said you wanted to live a normal life.”

“Yes. No.” He _had_ said the words. He had never believed it could be a reality.

~~~

Setonne had a house filled with books, and Craie was given a room there. Flint frequently came to visit. Craie took aruna with Flint, and sometimes Setonne, and once with Kessarn.

His pain melted away, his scars faded. He began to touch and hear and smell things he had not truly experienced for years: the softness of fine fabrics, the ripple of bird song, the scent of spices in his food. He drank it all in, sometimes delirious with the sensations.

Life was good. Yet…

He still possessed the brick fragment. Flint and the others had either not found it in his jacket pocket, or did not hear it. Now and then he took it out and listened to it. The ghost in the brick was sad. She longed to go home.

She did not talk about oaths sworn and not kept. She gave Craie the memory of her death, but not the wounds. That was intriguing. That was a matter he ought to think long and hard about, now he was capable of such thoughts.

After a few days, word of what Flint and the others had done leaked out. Important hara from both sides of the Little Divide came to talk to him, to examine him. There was debate, and opinion and shouting. A lot of shouting.

Craie found he could tune them out, as he had always tuned out hara to listen to the ghosts. Even now, when the ghosts were the tiniest whisper off over the horizon, he could still block hara. It was especially easy with the ones who did not speak his language. Without ghosts to translate their words, they were just noise to him. He also found he was really good at blocking mind-touch. Really, really good.

They did not ask him to go back.

Flint was smug about this, though Craie understood there had been a cost. Certainly the three hara were never to return to Sulh Jinh, and had been dismissed from the institute where they were scholars.

~~~

Today there was more shouting. Not important hara this time, but simply Setonne, Flint and Kessarn. Craie understood the argument involved money and food, which bewildered him. Until now he had never had to worry about where food came from. Baskets and bundles simply turned up at whichever graveyard he was tending.

He left the house and the shouting behind him. Walked through the spring rain, until he had gone beyond the harish town and approached the overgrown ruins of the human city which nestled up against it.  With each step the fragment in the pocket of his jacket bumped gently against his hip.

He wandered the ruined streets until he found a graveyard.

There he found them. An area of the cemetery where the familiar shapes and colours were clustered: pale white-grey limestone in stark contrast to the other headstones of granite and sandstone. Wild poppies grew around the graves, their buds tight with promise; awaiting Meadowmoon and the summer sun.

Craie walked from grave to grave, his fingers trailing across each headstone. The dead spoke. _War. Death. Sacrifice._ Yet they were not _his_ dead. They gave him memories, but not wounds. They did not long for home like his fragment, for this _was_ their home soil. They did not rage at betrayal, for here the promise had been kept.

He turned. There were other hara lurking amongst the gravestones. Scrawny, their hair wild and tangled – almost feral in appearance. Faint scars dappled each of their bodies. They drifted closer, wary. Four sets of eyes regarded him solemnly.

Craie spoke, but it became obvious they did not speak his tongue. So instead, he squatted by one of the graves, pulled out the fragment, and carefully unwrapped it.

The skinniest came forward, dropped to his haunches and cautiously reached out a finger to touch the brick. Craie felt the ghost wail of her death. The skinny har tensed, but did not break contact. He spoke a few terse words to the others. One at a time they came and reverently touched the shard, relived the ghost’s death.

Then they gently crowded round Craie, touching the visible scars. He pulled off jacket and shirt, letting rain and harish fingers trace the marks which patterned his skin.  Flint had denied Alba Sulh had hara like him, yet here they were.

“Sulh?” he asked.

“Taphos,” came the reply. He heard the word and instantly knew its meaning. The caretakers, the mourners, the guardians. The Tomb Hara.

Carie reached out with mind-touch and showed them the Five Beaches, the bridges, the battlefields and the war cemeteries scattered all across the land of Sulh Jinh.

 _We know of these places,_ came the response.

They held all the sites in reverence, these Tomb Hara. Remembered the names from their time as humans; remembered being soldiers or sailors themselves, before Wraeththu blood mingled with their own and transformed them.

They remembered what the ghosts were promised. They – like Craie – had always kept that vow.

They grieved he had been alone; no other Taphos to share the eternal task.

When he stood up to depart, three of them melted away into the graveyard; vanishing as if they had never existed. The fourth intertwined his fingers with Craie’s own, and walked with him out through the ruins and back towards the Sulh.

~~~

“Craie, where have you been? We’ve been worried.” Flint managed to sound simultaneously relieved and irritated. He took in Craie’s soaked, shirtless state with a frown, then deepened it as he looked over the Tomb Har. “Who’s he?”

“Taphos,” Craie answered,

“Taphos, eh?” Flint looked the Tomb Har up and down, evidently not liking what he saw.

Craie realised Flint thought this the har’s name, not his tribe. But the Taphos squeezed his fingers, and Craie understood it did not matter if the Sulh remained unaware of the existence of the Tomb Hara.

“What’s that?” Flint had noticed the brick fragment he still clutched in one hand.

Craie held his hand out, palm up, offering it to him.

Flint picked it up, then gave a yelp and dropped it as if burned. “Aghama’s balls, Craie! Throw that damn thing in the sea. The humans and their stupid wars should be forgotten.”

No, that was wrong. The very wrongness of it grated on Craie’s nerves. “Promised. They were promised.”

“Promised?”

“Humans promised their war dead would always be remembered. Honoured.”

“The humans are gone. Well most of them, anyway.” Flint waved a hand airily. “Their promises count for nothing.”

Not true. How could Flint not see this? Such vows had power beyond imagining. Millions of humans dead. Millions more mourning and pledging to always remember. Memorials built. Ceremonies held. Pilgrimages by comrades, family, even tourists. The tradition passed on to the young: children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren. Each bowed head, each murmured prayer, each solemn word spoken… all added a fraction more potency to the promise.

The ghosts and the blood-soaked earth would stay angry unless the promise was adhered to: _We Will Remember Them Today, Tomorrow and For Ever._

He stooped to pick up the fragment. “I have to go back.”

~~~

_Two torpedoes impact your ship and you are burning, sinking, burning. A shell hits your landing craft, shredding you and the men aboard. You sprint down the ramp, but they’ve misjudged the depth and the water is over your head – the weight of your kit dragging you down, the undertow pulling you further and further from shore…_

As the boat sailed over the resting place of those the sea had kept for herself, Craie har Taphos stood on the deck and felt the outpouring of memory wash over him. It was easier to bear the pain and wounds when there were two of you. Ayyen har Taphos stood at his side, face creased in concentration as he contemplated the scale of their task.

“Meadowmoon is coming.” Ayyen spoke in his own tongue, yet with the help of the ghosts Craie understood. The Five Beaches trembled in anticipation of Meadowmoon and the anniversary. The land and sea prepared to remember.

They left the vessel together at Sulh-Bessin and headed inland. But afterwards their paths parted. Ayyen to go south-west to the great cemetery at Bayeux; where the dead remember the green and pleasant land of Alba Sulh. Craie went east, to the vast array of graves which overlooked the bloodiest of the Five Beaches.

Word had gone out. Other Taphos would come.

The burden would be shared.

And perhaps – one day – a har would come from Megalithica, to soothe the ghosts who longed for those faraway shores.

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for as a potential submission for the Para Spectral anthology, but was deemed too human-focused.


End file.
